Comments on: Popular Againhttp://www.transatlantis.net/blog/2009/02/03/popular-again/
Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:18:41 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.13By: Rachel-Nicolehttp://www.transatlantis.net/blog/2009/02/03/popular-again/comment-page-1/#comment-1218
Sat, 08 Jan 2011 10:21:03 +0000http://www.transatlantis.net/blog/?p=156#comment-1218I wasn’t aware capitalism was unpopular; I see it more as being misunderstood–just shrouded by the disregard and ignorance of the consuming masses.
]]>By: Francis Hwanghttp://www.transatlantis.net/blog/2009/02/03/popular-again/comment-page-1/#comment-96
Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:46:08 +0000http://www.transatlantis.net/blog/?p=156#comment-96Hey Tom, I posted a follow-up here: http://fhwang.net/2009/02/17/What-I-like-about-capitalism-early-thoughts
]]>By: Tom Khttp://www.transatlantis.net/blog/2009/02/03/popular-again/comment-page-1/#comment-95
Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:02:30 +0000http://www.transatlantis.net/blog/?p=156#comment-95Thanks Tim! That’s a good short summary of the Swedish phenomenon. Sweden is always used as an example of a successful ‘left-leaning’ country, and a model to be emulated. The rhetoric on the other ‘right-leaning’ side tends to see Sweden as an exceptional country, whose success could not be duplicated anywhere else. Especially not in the US. And sure, we may not be able to become Sweden, but I’m sure we can learn something. At the very least, how Sweden coped with their financial crisis.
]]>By: Tim Murrayhttp://www.transatlantis.net/blog/2009/02/03/popular-again/comment-page-1/#comment-94
Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:28:36 +0000http://www.transatlantis.net/blog/?p=156#comment-94They may benefit from a war profiteering in the 40s, a homogenous culture that emphasis moderation and sharing (“lagom”), and a wealth of natural resources as compared to population, but the Swedes have done alright economically over the last decade. I’m not sure what counts as “left-leaning” but on paper their priorities economically have always been a strong social state (universal health care, free higher education, strict laws protecting workers, etc). Recently the Social Democrats were supplanted by a conservative government which originally promised more privatization but now obviously is scaling back that agenda. But when they say “conservative” in Sweden it still means well to the left of the Democrats here. When I lived there there was an election in which one of the major issues was who was going to increases taxes more, ostensibly to provide more benefit to the aging population. And in the 90s they managed to navigate a banking crisis similar to ours now by nationalizing all their banks and then selling them again to private investors when the bad debt had been culled. And they turned a profit. The scares we’re getting here about government run banks is just laughable when you looks at the casual way the Swedes went about it. It was just the natural thing in their view.
]]>By: Francis Hwanghttp://www.transatlantis.net/blog/2009/02/03/popular-again/comment-page-1/#comment-93
Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:08:56 +0000http://www.transatlantis.net/blog/?p=156#comment-93Yeah, obviously “successful” in a complicated word, and a lot of it has to do with how idealistic you want to be about the whole thing … I ask because I think I’ve become a bit of a capitalist over the years, and a big part of it is the sense of cultural freedom that it seems to enable. That’s not the same as saying that capitalism is freedom–I think that kind of rhetoric is silly. But I can’t think of a lot of cultures that are really dynamic and multiracial and have economies that are significantly different from the Washington Consensus. Maybe Brazil counts as a notable exception, though I don’t really know that much about Brazil.
Some of this comes from my admittedly limited experience of being a non-white person in Europe. I could’ve lived in Spain for fifty years and nobody would’ve ever considered me a Spaniard. But in many parts of the U.S., people don’t give a fuck where you come from as long as you can make good money. It’s like we take all the old prejudices and replace them with one big one based on money. Maybe that’s a bargain I’m okay with.
]]>By: Tom Khttp://www.transatlantis.net/blog/2009/02/03/popular-again/comment-page-1/#comment-92
Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:24:28 +0000http://www.transatlantis.net/blog/?p=156#comment-92Hey Francis, good question! I suppose the corollary question is how do you define ‘fairly successful’? It’s hard to find any countries, left or right leaning, that have been ‘fairly successful.’ Sure many have had boom times in the past decade (the US among them – the late 90s are still only a decade away), but can those boom times be called successes in the light of the current situation? I don’t know. My left-leaning posts tend to be more philosophical and US centric… I find it constantly frustrating that the word ‘socialism’ carries such stigma here, but not pretty much anywhere else in the world‚Ä¶ despite the fact that many of the gains in quality of life in the US can be honestly described as ‘socialist’ in nature. Eastern Europe and Russia have come to terms (though not always by choice, or with best results) with Capitalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the US has yet to come to term with Socialism. Is Canada successful? Sweden? Not sure. They have their share of problems too. I’m more interested in specific local phenomena like the rise of organic farming in Cuba, or the communist state of Kerala in India‚Ä¶ and other out of left field hybrids.
]]>By: Francis Hwanghttp://www.transatlantis.net/blog/2009/02/03/popular-again/comment-page-1/#comment-91
Thu, 05 Feb 2009 03:53:54 +0000http://www.transatlantis.net/blog/?p=156#comment-91Hey Tom, what would you consider to be contemporary examples of countries that have been left-leaning economically over the past decade, and have been fairly successful at it?
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